LaFerrari Aperta hammers for 10 million bucks!

World briefly stops rotation, sighs, goes on

September 9, 2017

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Somebody just bought the Ferrari-you-can’t-buy. Yes, a Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta sold for $10 million Saturday night at the RM Sotheby’s auction at Ferrari's Fiorano track in northern Italy. (By our calculations, 8.3 million Euros equals $9,989,340.50. We just rounded that up to $10 million.)

Mama mia!

That’s a record for a modern car. It’s also double what RM Sotheby’s thought it would go for.

“Tonight in Maranello, Italy, at the historic Pista di Fiorano during the Ferrari's 70th anniversary celebrations, a 2017 LaFerrari Aperta, the Italian marque’s ultimate hypercar, set a record for a 21st Century car when it sold for €8.3 million at the RM Sotheby’s Leggenda E Passione sale,” read a two-paragraph release from RM Sotheby’s.

Twelve collectors were in the bidding, none of whom were named. If you bought the car, email us, will ya?

The proceeds from the sale of the car will be donated to Save the Children, an international organization that works to improve the lives of disadvantaged children in more than 120 countries worldwide, Ferrari said. In this case, the funds raised will be used for educational projects in Asia and Africa.

Why is this particular car making everyone crazy? Because unless you were one of the lucky 209 buyers who were deemed fit to purchase one, you can’t purchase one. Or you couldn’t, until last night’s auction.

If you want to create demand, just announce that there is a limited supply. In this case, a supply of 209.

Ferrari said that this is Aperta #210, not one of the original 209 announced last year in Paris, when it was also announced that all 209 had already been sold. Last year’s sold-out announcement caused much millionaire agony around the globe. There were accusations, recriminations and at least one lawsuit. So when Ferrari announced that one more lone Aperta was going up for sale at its auction in Fiorano, the collector car world freaked out. Then started bidding.

The results for the rest of the auction aren’t out yet, but a few other Ferraris went for large sums. A California 250 GT SWB went for $9.5 million, a 1958 250 GT Cabriolet Series I for $5.7 million and the aluminum-bodied 365 GTB/4, rediscovered in a Japanese hayloft, changed hands for $2.2 million. There were others, but all expected to go for less than the Aperta’s hammer price. We’ll let you know as the results trickle out of Italy. Suffice to say, there is no bubble, or it has not yet burst, on this end of the collector car spectrum.